Name: Tarragon Vinegar
Ingredients: 3 ounces tarragon leaves; 1 quart white wine vinegar or good cider vinegar

Why it works: Tarragon and white wine work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 409 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tarragon Vinegar

Ingredients

3 ounces tarragon leaves
1 quart white wine vinegar or good cider vinegar

Directions

Prepare

Strip the leaves from the tarragon branches.
Place the leaves in a quart jar.
Fill the jar with vinegar.

Infuse and strain

Close the jar and let it stand for 20 days.
Strain the vinegar before use.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Tarragon + white winetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together409 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tarragon leaves: Supply the aroma and flavor that infuse into the vinegar over time.
White wine vinegar or cider vinegar: Acts as the solvent that extracts the tarragon's flavor and carries it.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.